There are four powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses sight, hearing, and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.

It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.

I'm mortified to be on the stage, but then again, it's the only place where I'm happy.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.